Council Receives Petition on Library Entrance
Prince George, B.C.- Friends of the Prince George Library are calling on City Council to bring back the plans to upgrade the entrance to the Library.
Ken Repstock addressed Council as part of the public input session leading into last evening’s session of Council’s budget deliberations. Repstock was armed with a petition that carries 1522 signatures, all from people who live in Prince George, calling for a safe and mobility friendly entrance to the Library.
The project is estimated at $2.5 million dollars, and it was to be done in 2014, but it is possible it will be moved to the 2017 unfunded projects on the capital list.
There are concerns the actual cost of the project could be well over $2.5 million, but the details won’t be known until next week, when Council tackles the capital plan as part of its budget deliberations.
Examining the full scope of the project could cost another $200 thousand dollars.
Comments
Is this what it takes now to get the council’s attention on matters that they seem to ignore?
Do we, as the citizens of this town, have to hit them in the head with petitions everytime we want them to act on something?
Well maybe if that is what it takes, at least we now have a way of getting their attention.
Are they only looking at one expensive design? I’m sure that if they put out a call for ordinary citizens to draw up ideas of what they would do with it there would be lots of interesting ideas brought forth and just maybe one of them would cost much less.
What do you think?
Good point, Give More. It seems to me that what we common little taxpayers deem important, and what people running this City want and need, are two entirely different things. I agree that the library entrance is bad and needs improvement, but then again, I think the whole original library design was not that user friendly when it was built! The cost for improvements, plus of course the prerequisite study seems ridiculous! I would like to see designs from at least three different companies, along with public input, particularly seniors and handicapped on these public buildings before any decisions are made. We need a more commonsense and practical approach to some of these things!
1522 signatures isn’t really that many in a city the size of PG. I am curious why there isn’t some sort of ‘user pay’ scheme put forward? It seems to be the way with everything else in PG. You pay to use the coliseum, aquatic centre, museum. etc….why not the library entrance?
It’s only $2000 each for those that signed the petition, just add it to their property tax for one year.
If less than %2 sign a petition then it shows the concern of the residents.
Take it out of Initiatives Prince George budget. At least than we would have something to show for our tax dollar!
Hmmmm nice logic Jim13136…let’s apply the same formula to the other civic facilities and see what the outcome is.
This is just a guess but the cost of simply operating and maintaining the public arenas in this town compared to the actual number of users would have to work out to well in excess of $10K per user…do you want that on your personal tax bill every year to have one kid playing hockey?
That’s why we spread the cost of all publicly used facilities among ALL taxpayers rather than simply the ones that use them!
I agree nyteHawwk,
But user fees are a way of life. For example, the new Medicine Hat arena will be completely paid for in short order. Every ticket sold to any event in the arena will have a $2 fee added to it that goes directly to repaying the debt of lending for the building of the arena.
Seems like this is a novel way to do things.
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